


A Perfect Queen

by LeBibish



Category: Cinderella (Fairy Tale), Fairy Tales - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-13
Updated: 2010-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 05:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeBibish/pseuds/LeBibish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a ballet of Cinderella, another character was introduced: the prince's court jester. The interactions between him and the prince provided an interesting new angle on the old fairy tale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Perfect Queen

She was perfection in glass slippers. Every man in the room wanted her from the moment she appeared in the door, and I was no exception. With her porcelain skin, ice-blonde hair and every movement filled with grace, I wanted her beside me. I wanted her as my queen, smiling that graceful smile at my subjects. I wanted to dance with her.

We moved in perfect tandem, every step a work of art. She was grace and beauty personified; the very room seemed brighter solely because she was in it. I could hear the whispers of approval that flowed beneath the music as we moved across the polished floor.

I looked away from her only once that evening—and saw you. Your face was perfectly schooled into an appropriate expression, but your eyes betrayed you. They always do.

When she fled at midnight, you were the one who found her slipper. I was too busy staring after her in bewilderment, my thoughts spinning in circles. The sudden motion of you bending down only confused me further until you stood up again, holding it. You handed it to me in silence.

I clutched it far too tightly, my knuckles turning white as I suppressed the urge to crush it in my hand. Its glass edges were sharp and I thought about the woman who was so sure of her own grace that she would wear something that could cripple her with a wrong step. I think everyone believed that I held onto that slipper so tightly because I was heartbroken by her disappearance.

I put the slipper in a glass case and set it on a pedestal in my throne room. I spent days staring at it. I didn't speak, I barely ate, I simply sat and stared; and thought.

And for days you didn't come near me. You avoided the room where I sat watching the perfect glass change the pure light coming through it into rainbows. When you couldn't avoid it, when duty or something else, perhaps morbid curiosity, dragged you into the room, you stood at the far edge and watched as my courtiers and servants begged me to eat, to sleep, to do something. Silently, you watched, but your eyes spoke volumes.

It was almost a month after the ball before you approached me. For once, I was not in the throne room, but outside in the gardens, attempting to escape from my well-meaning courtiers who were trying to come up with various plans to find her. As I walked down the gravel-strewn paths, I heard you come up behind me. I didn't turn around. If I looked at you, I would see your eyes, and I could not bear that.

Your voice was even and calm, even as it broke something inside me. "She would be a perfect queen."

I knew that from the moment I saw her.

When I left the garden, I ordered the procession. "Try the slipper on the foot of every maid in the kingdom until you find her," I said.

It was a delaying tactic. I could have narrowed it down. Beyond the fact that she was blonde with blue eyes (not as common as one would think), I saw who she took pains to avoid that night. I could have told them where to search. Instead, I let them sweep through most of the kingdom before they finally found her.

When I heard that the procession had made its way to the right estate, I joined it. And you came with me. I almost let her slip away when I saw her in the shadows. I pretended I hadn't seen her and turned away to leave. You were the one who called attention to her. You were the one who took the slipper to her and put it on her foot.

She is the perfect queen. Graceful, beautiful, compassionate, and she loves me for no other reason than that she is no longer sitting in a fireplace, covered with soot. She glories in her new luxuries but doesn't forget to smile graciously at everyone and anyone. The people love her. As do I.

Because she doesn't see the way I watch you. She doesn't spot the fact that when I smile at you it is more real than any expression I show to other people. She doesn't notice when I slip away and reappear minutes, sometimes hours later, my hair and clothes a little more rumpled than they had been, my breath a little faster than it should be.

She thinks, as they all do, that I keep that pedestal with the slipper out of some romantic notion that it led me to my bride, my true love. They never realize that I didn't need the slipper to find her; that I knew exactly where she would be and delayed only because I didn't want to find her.

I keep it, that perfect glass slipper, because it is a reminder that while I may have you in the dark and forgotten places of the palace, it is her that I must have in the light. A reminder that the hand on my arm as I face my people is smaller than the one that strokes my passion in the night. I look at that slipper, and I want to smash it, crush it slowly and feel the glass shards dig deep into my hands. I think it might hurt less than this pain in my heart which spreads throughout my entire body. A pain that I see reflected in your eyes every day.

I needed a queen. I wanted you.

Forgive your prince, my Fool.


End file.
